100 K in a day

It doesn’t seem like much on paper. Sixty-six miles. You cover that in an hour on the highway at cruising speed. I have been doing my preparation, getting out on the bike every other day for the last couple of weeks and clocking from 30 to 50 kms on the bike path. Yesterday, however, it was a different story.

The event is called “Around the Bay in a Day.” It began 14 years ago with about 2500 riders. Yesterday there were some 14,000 cyclists. It is a fund raising event for a charitable group called “The Smith Family,” which raised nearly half a million dollars last year for disadvantaged children. I don’t know how much they raised yesterday but there were a lot of corporate teams in evidence.

I wasn’t up to 250 kms, or even 210, but I didn’t think 100 would be so hard. The official start for…